Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The bad news is that most of the Slate series is still not functioning properly (grrrrr); the good news is that I've been given permission to republish the entire series here on this blog.

The first Slate article is, for the most part, fine (some of the photo links are a bit wonky, but it's mostly OK), so you can read that on Slate. You're better off reading the second, third, fourth, and fifth articles here. The photo interface here on the blog isn't as elegant as the one on Slate, but at least all the links work, all of the text is present and accounted for, and so on.

So if you want to take in the entire series, or pick up where you left off, here you go:

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Isn't that nice? It's a little charm (actual size: half an inch wide), given to me by the lovely Kirsten Hively -- her way of congratulating me on Permanent Record's success.

Meanwhile: The folks at Slate are in the process of restoring the five-article series to its full functionality. It's not quite there yet, but it's getting close. I hope to post updated links to the series in a few days. Thanks for your patience.

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Permanent Record, an object-based history project by journalist Paul Lukas, began as an investigation into the stories emerging from a bunch of old report cards found in a discarded file cabinet. The report cards are still the core of the project, but Permanent Record has expanded to include examination of other found objects, including postcards, business records, photographs, things left inside of old books, messages in bottles, and so on. Basically, if it's an old object, seems to have an evocative story to tell, and has been orphaned, lost, or otherwise isolated outside its natural habitat, Permanent Record is interested in it.

You can learn more about Permanent Record here. To contact Paul Lukas, or to be added to the PermaRec mailing list, please click here.

• Uni Watch is an obsessive look at the world of sports uniform and logo design.

• My Pet Troll documents the relationship between a writer/webmaster and his most obsessive and bellicose troll.

• Show & Tell, which is currently on hiatus but may be revived at some point in the future, is a live storytelling series in which participants are welcome to bring an object of personal significance and talk about it for up to three minutes.

• The Candela Structures, a collaboration with the architect Kirsten Hively, documents the surprisingly complicated history of a set of super-cool fiberglass structures in Queens.

• One-Man Focus Group, a weekly column that ran on The New Republic’s website for the first half of 2013, looked at the worlds of consumer culture, design, and branding in excruciatingly close detail.

• The Forewords, a collaboration with the writer Liz Clayton, are a lecture/slideshow "band" that has opened for the Magnetic Fields and performed while sitting in very, very high chairs, among other career highlights.

• Fire Wayne Hagin Already! chronicled the on-air foibles of a particularly incompetent baseball radio broadcaster and advocated for his dismissal.